Grant cleans up veterans cemetery in Sandusky

SANDUSKY, Ohio - Thousands of military veterans' headstones and burial plots are being refurbished in a massive cleanup effort at a cemetery in northwestern Ohio.

SANDUSKY, Ohio — Thousands of military veterans’ headstones and burial plots are being refurbished in a massive cleanup effort at a cemetery in northwestern Ohio.

Broken, cracked and aging headstones at the Ohio Veterans Home cemetery in Sandusky began getting fixed or replaced this month with nearly $800,000 from the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs.

Joe Tyree, the home’s operations assistant, said he has been told that the Sandusky facility is the first veterans home in the country to receive that type of grant.

“We have veterans here, and we want to get it up to correct standards to honor them,” Tyree said.

The project will spruce up all 4,200 headstones and plots at the cemetery.

Many of the stones have become blackened, broken or barely readable over time. Some stones date back to the early 1800s, and dirt has accumulated on nearly every headstone.

Tyree expects the project to continue into August.

Avatara Services, a specialized veteran-owned business in North Carolina, won the contract to perform the work. The company says its workers have improved about 100,000 military headstones during the past four years around the country.

Eugene Mack, a resident of the nursing home, has been watching the cleanup.

“I think it’s good, and I’m glad they’re doing it,” said Mack, a former Marine who served in World War II.

Chris Kaufman, a maintenance supervisor at the home, says the thousands of veterans buried in the home’s cemetery deserve an immaculate plot.

“We owe all of our freedoms to veterans,” said Kaufman.

Federal statistics show that almost 90 percent of the country’s 20 million veterans live within 75 miles of a military-sanctioned burial site.